Uniformity and Creation:A Response to Edwords and Thwaites

Creation Evolution Journal

Title:

Uniformity and Creation:A Response to Edwords and Thwaites

Author(s):

Norman L. Geisler

Volume:

4

Number:

4

Quarter:

Fall

Page(s):

36–39

Year:

1984

EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is a continuation of
a debate from last issue on the design argument for special creation. In the
last issue, Norman Geisler presented his basic case. Frederick Edwords
responded, and William Thwaites expanded upon the whole question with an article
that covered issues such as the probability of evolution and the evidence for
natural selection. What follows below is Norman Geisler's rebuttal to both
Edwords and Thwaites, followed by Edwords' counter-rebuttal. The "Letters to
the Editor" section of this issue contains additional comment on this
debate.

Suppose that
upon meeting some evolutionist friends at Mount Rushmore we inform them of our
conclusion that uniform experience points to an intelligent cause of the
information conveyed on the mountain side. And suppose in response that they
point out that not all who posit an intelligent cause for this phenomenon agree
on how long it took to produce these faces. Will this uncertainty about the time
involved in their production minimize our conviction that they had an
intelligent cause?

Or suppose further that one evolutionist suggests that
even some round stones, such as the one found in the stream, may have been
deliberately smoothed by an intelligent being. Will this diminish in the least
the evidence in favor of an intelligent creator of the faces on Mount
Rushmore?

Then suppose that our friends offer the unusual argument that
the information reflected in these faces does not need an intelligent cause any
more than a round stone needs a round cause. Would we not upon further scrutiny
recognize this to be the logical fallacy of emphasizing the accidental?

In
addition, would we not be puzzled if our evolutionist friends implied that since
stratified stones or crystals have redundant patterns in them, then we can
expect that when a river deposits enough of them it will eventually produce its
own Mount Rushmore, faces and all?

- page 37 -

Further, suppose that one of our
evolutionist friends suggests that because thousands of replicas of Mount
Rushmore have been mechanically reproduced as souvenirs that this redundancy
somehow eliminates the need for an intelligent cause of the original faces on
the mountain. Would this in any way affect our conviction about the need for an
intelligent creator of these faces?

Suppose further that it is argued that
nature has many formations in rocks which show vague resemblance to human or
animal forms. Would the existence of these indistinct forms with probable
natural causes take away our firm conviction that the distinct faces on Mount
Rushmore had an intelligent cause?

And what would we think if one of our
friends objected to an intelligent creator of Mount Rushmore saying, "I have
never seen it sculpted, nor a sculptor of it"? Would he also reject an architect
of the Great Pyramid because he had never seen such a pyramid built, nor such a
pyramid builder? Or rather should he not be content with the principle of
uniformity which calls only for a similar cause for similar
effects to those observed in the present.

Further, knowing that
sculptors were not sculpted by sculptors but that only sculptures
need a sculptor, would we not be amused if our friend rejected a sculptor of
Mount Rushmore on the fascinating, but irrelevant, premise that "every sculptor
needs a sculptor." Surely he would not also insist that every painter was
painted because every painting has a painter.

And what if one of our
evolutionist friends admits that uniform experience confirms that watches have
watchmakers. But he insists, nevertheless, that similar experience does not
indicate that information, such as that on Mount Rushmore or in a living cell,
had an information giver. Would a natural observer view this as consistent
reasoning?

Further, noting that there is a "mathematically identical"1
relationship between information conveyed by human intelligence and information
in the DNA of a living cell, are we likely to be impressed by the evolutionist's
claim that this is "a weak analogy"?

And no doubt we would even be
perplexed if our evolutionist friends suggested that natural selection could
account for the origin of the first living cell. For did not even the great
evolutionist, Dobzhansky, declare that "prebiological natural selection is a
contradiction in terms.2 Surely everyone is aware that natural
selection could work only after there are living things to select
among.

- page 38 -

Also, what if our friends declare that natural selection has
"creative" powers which replace watchmakers and which operate the way an
intelligent being forms words
from Scrabble letters? Would we not wonder how a non-intelligent blind force
like natural selection possessed the characteristics of an intelligent creator?
And would not our suspicion be further confirmed when we hear other
evolutionists declare that evolution has "arranged," "designed,"3 or
"composed"4 things helpful to the continuance of human
life?

And what if the evolutionists were to suggest that the intelligence
which caused first life was human intelligence. Would we not be
dumbfounded, knowing that he believes human beings did not emerge until millions
of years later?

Further, is it not doubtful whether any person would give
up his belief that the 20 million volumes of genetic information found in the
human brain had an intelligent creator simply because we did not know just
how intelligent such a creator of the brain is? How would ignorance about
the degree of intelligence it had negate the knowledge that the evidence
pointed to a very intelligent creator of life?

And what surprise
would greet us were our evolutionist friend to proclaim that a process involving
random mistakes on Mary Had a Little Lamb over long periods would be more
likely to produce the likes of Hamlet, providing that this was not its
ultimate goal. How would having no goal to reach a higher level of complexity in
information be of assistance in achieving it? Does not repeated experience
indicate that information becomes more garbled, not more complex, by introducing
random mistakes undirected by any intelligence?

And in view of uniform
experience in favor of an intelligent cause of information, we would surely be
surprised to discover that one of our friends had declared that "evolution is
inevitable." And to hear others insist that "evolution is a fact, not a
theory"5 should be shocking to all who, like our friends, claim that
science is never "air-tight" but always tentative in nature.

But what then
would we think if our friends should subsequently inform us that an appeal to a
supernatural intelligence for the information in first life is "an
impossibility"? Would we not surely wonder what had become of their profession
that science is tentative in view of such an air-tight claim?

Especially
would their claim that there is no such intelligent cause of life be surprising
in view of the admission by our evolutionist friends that there are two known
causes for information, one of which is intelligence. For if intelligence is a
known cause of information, could not a creationist rightly inquire why it is
unscientific to posit an intelligent cause for the tremendous volumes of
information found in living things?

And what if our evolutionist friends
declare that a scientist should never appeal to an intelligent creator of
information as opposed to a purely natural law? Would we not wonder how
productive their study of geology would be if they had to examine Mount
Rushmore until they found some non-intelligent natural law of erosion to explain
the faces formed there.6

- page 39 -

Finally, in view of the fact that the
father of modern evolution, Charles Darwin, called natural selection "my deity,"
7 might not some creationists be concerned about the religious
implications of such a claim? This may be of special concern when they realized
that one of our evolutionist friends said that all school children should be
taught how Darwin, in view of evolution, gave up his former belief in a creator.
And if in addition they discovered that this same evolutionist friend believed
that the evolutionary view is the only one that should be taught in
public schools, they may even be inclined to agree with the ACLU attorney,
Clarence Darrow, who said at the Scopes trial, it is "bigotry for public schools
to teach only one theory of origins."8

References

1. See
H. P. Yockey, "Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and
Information Theory" in The Journal of Theoretical Biology (1981) 91:16.

6. This methodological naturalism is
contrary both to the origin and nature of science. See N. L. Geisler, Is Man
the Measure: An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism, Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1983, ch. 11, and Miracles and Modem Thought, Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982, ch. 4.